Thursday, July 08, 2010

how many hours in a day...

... how much time, do you suppose, the more devoted bloggers spend posting, commenting and reading blogs; their own and others? Not to mention following Twitter and reading news feeds, participating in online spats and childish back and forths? How many hours are spent regurgitating that negativeness?

23 comments:

Sometimes I wonder why I read what I do. I read a lot of news sites, and it just serves to depress me. Even a lot of the Catholic blogs (not yours, of course) bring up things that rile me up.

I've recently learned through homeschooling my kids that there is the Church Triumphant (in heaven), the Church Suffering (in purgatory) and the Church Militant (here on Earth.) [I'm a convert by the way, and did not learn this in RCIA]

Do you suppose that God is preparing us for something...giving us all this 'stuff' to sort through so that we can be ready for a fight? We are the Church Militant, after all.

I read quite a few blogs and keep the comments short. I've long ago stopped engaging in vain comment wars, I don't read news feeds, I don't generally read past the first paragraph of a flame post, I spend the bulk of my time drawing cartoons actually. Prayer? Usually while I'm working or driving (most of the time its 2 hours a day travel time). I've given up trying to do prayers in front of the family altar.

I take the St. Benedict approach - Ora et labora. Pray and labor, simultaneously. I can't speak for other bloggers, but the act itself is, in some ways, a prayer. Especially for the priest/semianrian/religious bloggers (like Fr. Z) who reach out to so many souls with wit and clarity.

Crescat : as far as I can see, you (like many others) squeeze running a popular blog into a busy life : probably, I strongly suspect, at the expense of having much 'private life' - but I bet your son never suffers from any neglect because his Mum blogs.

However, I think that in fact the majority of the 'devoted' Catholic bloggers are single, probably celibate, and see blogging as their particular way of preaching (if you like to call it that - I prefer to think of it as my way of 'contemplata aliis tradere', being basically Dominican in my makeup).

In other words, it's a ministry : but I'm quite certain that, like any other ministry, it doesn't work all that well if it's done (as a general rule) at the expense of prayer . . . the good blogs feed off the prayers of their bloggers; and in my opinion, it shows.

They spend a lot of time commenting and following feeds, etc. I have been trying to increase my readership at http://lasvegasmama.blogspot.com but it takes a whole lot of time to comment on all those other blogs and to do all the social networking. Judging by how long it takes me to get just one more follower blogging is a full time job for some. Either that or i am just really bad at it. Time is better spent in prayer, as you mention. I stopped saying the rosary every night when I started putting more time into blogging. Sad. Your post today is making me reassess what I am doing. Thank you.

Like others have mentioned, blogging is prayer (like the Benedictin ora pro labore). I consider, as you should too, Kat, that blogging is cyber ministry. Reading blogs is preparation. I think blogging is not time wasting, as watching TV. Blogging can be watching TV, just connect live, but it's more fun interacting on line. Of course, interacting in person with family and friends trumps, but when the fam watches TV, I blog.

I am single, celibate, and I definitely do not have the literally HOURS that many bloggers seem to have to devote to their craft...

Perhaps they are unemployed, perhaps they are retired, perhaps they can blog at work (which I think is a sin--you are paid to work not to blog), perhaps they are paid to blog, perhaps they are students (although when I was an engineering student I barely had time to shower and brush my teeth, much less blog), perhaps they are stay-at-home spouses...etc etc.

For myself--I have a full-time career, plus on-going continuing professional education, plus daily commute, plus care of my household (housework, laundry, meal prep, grocery shopping, vehicle maintenance), plus care for my pets,plus my daily Secular Carmelite spirituality (Divine Office, etc). I get about half hour of TV in the evenings to watch the local news..I permit myself one hour to read emails and surf the Web, visit a few of my favorite blogs...I also function in this world much better when I have 8 hours of good sleep..I look better too :)

Your comments have much insight. There are many reasons why certain people are able to blog so much. For some, it may indeed be that they need to blog (and/or read blogs, and comment) less, and devote that time to prayer. I am convicted by Kat's post myself, and I am grateful for that conviction (even as it stings-- but it's a good sting!).

Some people are able to be so blog-active, apparently, because they simply have incredibly quick minds and can read, process, and type very quickly. One of my blogger friends, Bryan Cross, of Principium Unitatis and Called to Communion, would seem to be in this category. He is married with children and seems to handle those responsibilities (privileges) well, but he is also able to write amazingly thoughtful, articulate, cogent blog posts and comments on any number of subjects. I'm just not capable of doing all that he does (well, that is), but he seemingly is able to do it, so I say God bless him, and more power to him (as long as he still has time to pray)!

There are also other, more idiosyncratic reasons why some people have much time (on their hands) to blog, comment, and such. My story is thus: I don't have a blog, but for me, right now, my Facebook page is basically my blog, and I also comment at Called to Communion and a few other sites.

The reason (partially) that I can do all of this has to do with certain factors that I actually wish were very different in my life. I have a physical disability, use a wheelchair (I'm not paralyzed though), am physically unable to drive, currently live in a city and state with... quite problematic... public transportation, and largely due to these factors, I am currently unemployed.

Almost three years ago, I moved to New Mexico from the D.C. area, for various reasons, one of which was to be in a milder climate, as the D.C. winters made it very difficult to get out and about in my wheelchair. I had heard that the buses were decent in New Mexico, for people with disabilities, and combined with the climate, I thought NM would be better for me than D.C. I even visted here twice before moving, and it seemed like a good choice. Wrong, wrong, wrong, on many different levels.

I have much "free" time out here, but I am living the (unwanted) life of a semi-shut-in! The bus routes are... I'll just say, this is not a good place to live, compared to D.C., if one has a disability and cannot drive. At least a few times a week, I think of how mobile I was in D.C., how involved and active I was in different good things in the outside world... and I left it all for the life I now have. If nothing else (and there *was* much else), where I used to live, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception was 30 minutes away by subway! Sigh.

However, it has also been out here, in the "desert," so to speak, that I have rediscovered the Catholic Church (I actually was a fervent Protestant, and fallen-away anti-Catholic, in D.C.) and returned Home to her. I don't have the life that I want, in many different ways, here. The solitude is good for me, *in doses*, but the amount of it that I now have is hard. I've seemingly lost most of my Protestant friends, and I don't know enough Catholics yet, in the physical world, to have re-built a decent circle of friends. I have tried and tried to find ways to move back to D.C., but the door hasn't opened.

Thus, I have free time to comment on blogs with some regularity (and, obviously, at some length!). Perhaps I should comment less. I should definitely pray more. I just hope that what I do write may help someone, or make him/her laugh, or be moved to positive action, etc. If so, my writing time will not have been (altogether) wasted.

Thank you, Anna, truly. I appreciate your comments, too, on the other blog where I think we have both commented. Honestly, the encouragement is needed. The past few years have been... tough and wonderful. Many dreams unfulfilled and/or dashed, but other great developments (like rreturning to the Catholic Church after years as a Protestant!) that I never, ever expected! God bless you, my sister.

I am praying for you in every word that I post here on your blog. I suppose I can be sarcastic and get involved in comment wars sometimes, but mostly, I like to think about and pray for my "blogfriends" and keep them and their prayers on my mind the next day (I do 90 percent of my computer time at night, when everyone's asleep). Reading things that bring me closer to God is a form of prayer. Prayer time has evolved much over the years. It's just a lot weirder than it was years ago, I guess. This was a good question.

I had a thought, today, about God's love, as related to prayer, and it may have changed my life-- in the sense of, yes, actually moving me to pray more!

I posted about it on my Facebook page (yes, I know, the irony), which serves, for now, as my wannabe "blog"; I'll copy and paste here:

"If Christians simply had more of an understanding of the infinite extent of God's love for us, as redeemed sinners and adopted children of the Father, our battle would not be to pray-- it would be to do anything else. May you have a wondrous day, in the reality of His love for you."

It helped me; maybe it will help someone else. I can't be a curmudgeon *all* the time... :-)

Sara, Christopher, & al;I think the crux is that no two people are the same, and no two people have the same recipe for getting things done. I'm lucky, and seem to function best on about 5.5 hours of sleep a night, which gives me a bit of 'extra' time - and even if I do usually work a ten hour day, that still gives quite a lot of time for blogging and similar things.I'm sure for other people their reasons for blogging or not blogging will be entirely different; but isn't that part of what it's about ? That we are able to contribute in different ways, at different times, to keeping the Faith alive on the internet ?